January 26, 2007

The Sixty Second Song Remix Contest (mp3s)

With my attention span declining by an average of three seconds per year, I thought it was high
time to hold a sixty second song remix contest. The rules are simple: take any "known"
song (whatever that means, I know, I know...) and reduce it to sixty seconds or less. I'd
like to get 78 of these, if possible, so enter as many times as you like! I'll be playing these on
the air and posting many of them here as well.

Extra credit for reducing extra long songs (such as those listed in Resident Clinton's Long Songs post).

The winner gets a WFMU messenger bag chock full of records and WFMU swag. Deadline is Friday,
February 23rd. E-mail your mp3 submissions to me at ken at wfmu dot org. Here's a few MP3 examples
to jog your imagination:

UPDATE 2: Wow, I am blown away by the amount and the
quality of the submissions I'm getting here! I can hardly keep up, but that's just the way I like
it. Here's a batch more, and if you don't see your version here, don't worry, I'll be posting more
as I find the time and I'll be playing these all on the air as well.

UPDATE 3: I made the unpardonable error
of attending to other business for the last day and a half, and now I
am woefully behind in my Sixty Second Song duties. While I continue to
catch up, here's another batch of fun submissions:

UPDATE 5: In honor of Prince's nipple-free rain-soaked halftime show, we present a magnificent version of Purple Rain, plus the first appearances here by Yes, Motorhead, New Kids on the Block and two classic radio pieces by the prolific Chris Combs. On Monday I'll be posting Ten Albums in Ten Minutes (full LP 60 second reductions) in a separate post.

UPDATE 8: And to think that when I started this contest, I said I wanted to receive 78 tracks. So far, I've received over 300 and there's still almost two weeks to the contest deadline. Thanks to everybody who's submitted! Please keep 'em coming at ken at wfmu dot org! I'm enjoying the hell out of this. Here's another batch:

UPDATE TEN: Wow, there are only a few days before the contest deadline. After Friday, February 23rd at Midnight, I wont be accepting any more entries, so get in your last minute masterpieces now! It occurs to me that a solitary winner doesn't do this little experiment justice, so I will announce a more varied winner's circle scheme this weekend, after I catch my breath. Here's another batch of recent arrivals:

UPDATE 11: Just to let you all know, the deadline for submissions has passed, but it's going to take me a few days to comb through the last few days worth of submissions. I will post a final batch here and then we'll work on to the final round for voting, in a separate post.

UPDATE 12: Here's a final batch of 30 tracks. After this comes the impossible task of narrowing down the 415 submissions to 20 or so finalists, and then letting you all vote on the winners. I'll do that in a separate post. I also have another post of full album reductions coming on Thursday. The final contest may take me a few more days, especially with the WFMU Marathon approaching.

The explicit-only version of Straight outta Compton is funny, but I would have liked it more if the beat was kept steady. I like Jonatan's version a lot, because the multilayering makes the rappers sound like dogs barking at bypassers, which, in a way, is what NWA was about.